Goaltenders often have some of the hardest paths through junior hockey. There’s only two or three spots available on most rosters and if you simply have just one bad game, your spot might be given to someone else. It can be extremely cutthroat and it isn’t for the faint of heart.

Nathan Mach’s strong mental fortitude is something that has served him well over the past calendar year as the Chanhassen, Minnesota, native has gone from the ranks of triple-A up into various levels of junior hockey.

Mach, who is now 19-years-old, was originally hoping to make a junior hockey roster last year with the Chippewa Steel of NAHL after his second year of triple-A hockey in Des Moines, Iowa. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out as he had hoped, so he found an opportunity instead to play one more year of triple-A with the Omaha Mastery program out in the Nebraska, so he packed up his bags and moved to the Cornhusker State in 2024-25.

With three full seasons of triple-A under his belt, Mach was determined to make a junior hockey roster then in the summer of 2025. He originally had hopes of playing on a USHL team but that unfortunately didn’t pan out but he had already signed a tender with the Minnesota Wilderness of the NAHL, so up to Northern Minnesota (Cloquet) he went. Mach did quite a bit of training and practicing with the Wilderness but only registered one official game with the squad. It was a bit frustrating for the 6-foot-3 netminder when he didn’t have his best showing with Minnesota since he knew he was capable of so much more, but he kept working hard and he knew that a door or an opportunity would have to open up somewhere.

Mach then found an opportunity through his advisor, APX’s Nick Sova, on the Granite City Lumberjacks team, located in Central Minnesota (Sauk Rapids). Sova knows Head Coach DJ Vold, so having a familiar connection through them was helpful for the Minnesotan goaltender in finding a place that would be a great fit for his hockey future.

“They told me that I could go over there [to Granite City] if I wanted and that it was a good place with great guys, great coaches, great facilities, and I trusted them and I went over there and I’ve had a blast ever since,” said Mach about his decision to join the NA3HL team with the Lumberjacks.

It wasn’t easy from the get-go though as the netminder had to put in plenty of work to prove himself there as well. There were a lot of goalies on the roster early on in the season so he had to be at his best to show that he belonged there.

“They had a lot of goalies [early on in the season] so I couldn’t really settle in and all the goalies that were there before me probably would say the same thing because you’d get one game and then you’d have to wait four or five games until you’d play again because we had six [goalies]. but once they started to cut them down I got in the groove a bit more and I got more reps and more games and I just felt way more comfortable then for sure,” said Mach.

Practicing and training with the Wilderness of the NAHL had certainly helped Mach in his first few weeks with the Lumberjacks as he had already been participating in high-level drills and such with Minnesota but it obviously took a few weeks to get acclimated to his new team in Granite City. It also helped that there were already some familiar faces on the Lumberjacks roster when Mach got there, including Riley Berg - who had played the past three seasons with Nathan in Des Moines and Omaha - and Ty Smith, Coltin Wassengeso, and Micah Saxon, who all have ties to Chaska/Chanhassen. Mach also didn’t have to go too far away from home for junior hockey which was helpful. He started out the season by commuting from his home in the Chanhassen area but then instead decided to stay with his grandparents in the Little Falls area later on since the drive was only about 30 minutes or so from the rink.

The 19-year-old goaltender really started to post eye-popping statistics with the Lumberjacks once he started to settle in and most fans of the NA3HL knew that Granite City would be a top contender in the playoffs in 2025-26. The team originally was undefeated from September 13 to November 21st of this past season, then had a bit of an up and down few weeks in winter, and then only lost one game from January 10th through the rest of the season.

“Once we started to find our groove again and started getting on a win streak that’s when I noticed like, wow, we’ve got a great group of guys, and we made our final cuts and everything and it just started to go up and up from there,” he said about how the team felt as they started to heat up and get better and better as playoffs came closer and closer.

Mach posted a .922 save percentage for the Lumberjacks in the regular season with a 13-2 record and two shutouts, so he was starting to feel more and more comfortable as the months went on. Once the postseason came around, Mach had to play in a tough game against the Rochester Grizzlies with the Granite City squad and the game was tied at 3-3 going into overtime - not necessarily an ideal scenario for a goaltender. The Chanhassen native ended up making 26 saves in that game before Eli Tiernan netted the game-winner to send the ‘Jacks to the title match against the reigning Fraser Cup champions the Louisiana Drillers.

“The weird thing about that is that usually I get a little nervous before big games but I was not nervous at all,” said Mach about how he felt before the championship match. “Besides in the first game [the semifinal against Rochester], I was a little nervous, but then after that I just trusted myself, trusted my team and they trusted me and I could just do what I do and I had no nerves and I knew as soon as we got there that I had no doubt in my mind that we were winning the cup.”

Mach and the Lumberjacks all felt confident heading into the Fraser Cup championship game and they all played extremely well, posting a 4-0 victory over Louisiana to win the organization’s first title since 2023. Mach himself earned a 22-save shutout and was named the First Star of the Game for his efforts.